Manufacturers of consumer devices for reception and decoding of radio-frequency modulated audio/video signals for rendering of audiovisual services (e.g. satellite receivers, cable receivers, terrestrial receivers, digital televisions or mobile cell phones with integrated satellite, cable or terrestrial receivers), tend to minimize hardware resources of those devices in order to reduce production costs and ensure a competitive market price. In particular, processing and memory resources are tailored to the strictly needed.
While the current trend is to a full-digital consumer electronic equipment, there are still many devices in consumer households that do not comply to the latest digital interconnection standards and interfaces, such as HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface). Consumers are reluctant to change perfectly functioning devices with analog audio/video inputs and outputs for new devices just because their recently bought flat-screen digital television equipment does not allow to connect their existing equipment. Therefore, manufacturers still need to supply their latest digital consumer electronic devices with additional analog audio/video inputs for backwards compatibility.
For consumers, the interconnection of the mix of analog and digital equipment, having different connection interfaces, is not easy to master and results in undesired quantity of unaesthetic and dust-retaining wiring.
There is thus a need for optimization of the interconnection of analog and digital equipment and of the hardware resources needed in digital audio/video devices to connect to existing analog audio/video devices that avoids additional and complex wiring.